Malwarebytes began detecting PC Matic as a Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) / Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) on December 5th. We immediately initiated efforts to resolve the issue. On December 23rd, we made contact with the proper people at Malwarebytes. After that point, the Malwarebytes personnel were responsive and professional, including working through the holiday weekend to resolve the issues.
Malwarebytes’ focus was on the PC Matic’s performance optimization code and a potential customer’s pre-purchase experience. Malwarebytes asserted that these features may have been appropriate for older systems, but no longer provided the benefits for newer systems such as Windows 10. Malwarebytes believed that PC Matic was overstating the benefits for these users.
Since the creation of Super Shield, PC Matic’s award-winning, whitelist real-time protection, our company’s marketing and development focus has shifted to computer security and less on computer optimization. We have made hundreds of changes to PC Matic’s user interface to inform, without overstating the benefits of using our product. The largest change was color coding certain features such as registry cleaning and disk defragmentation as purple rather than red.
As of January 10, 2016, Malwarebytes removed PC Matic from their PUP/PUA list.
The outpouring of consumer support during this tricky time was a source of inspiration and strength. Now that this episode is behind us, we will continue to work in making the absolute best American made security and proving it in public tests.
You can read the full PC Pitstop fourth quarter newsletter here.